It’s May, and this means most communities around here start banning dogs from their beaches until the end of the summer. After some online searching, we found one town that kept their beaches open to dogs until the 20th of this month. It was a beautiful Sunday and we had no problem hopping on the car and driving up for a little beach time.

We always carry this 30-ft black cotton leash with us so Kaiju can run around. However, we have recently realized it’s too short for the chuckit fun. So, we went and got this 50-ft nylon leash. We thought its lightness would be helpful. When we got to the destination, we connected the 50-feet leash and the 30-feet, then hooked Kaiju up to it. Oh boy it was so long.

Aside from its color, yellow, there are several cons of this nylon leash. 1) Bad grip. When Kaiju ran away at full speed, it slipped out of our hands quite easily. 2) When it slipped, it burned our skin. 3) Because it’s braided, it collected so much sand which came out later in our bag. 4) When Kaiju played with other dogs, it was too light to stay on the ground. It wrapped around the dogs’ legs easily and when it did, it didn’t seem gentle on their skins.

Soon after that, we let Kaiju off leash. We hadn’t fed him yet, and we had cheese and diced Red Barn food rolls to lure him back. He did well off-leash at a park, the day before. And there were more and more dogs arriving, which meant Kaiju was more and more likely to stick around. He was one of the more social dogs there. He ran around with some dog owners, as well as every dog that came near him. He even went into the water a little bit just to be near the white fluffy one.

When we called Kaiju’s name, he came running. He sat and took the treats like a real good dog. He was so happy, just to be there. We were happy just watching him. He would not hear us sometimes because he was too busy chasing or being chased by other dogs. Then we saw other dogs completely ignoring their owners calling, and we felt a bit better…

After the beach, we took out fish and chips, calamari, and clam chowder from a fish market. We found a little park along the coast to have our lunch. It was such a nice outing. Kaiju had plenty of energy left to run around some more before heading home. One thing to remember for next time: bring a soft towel. He had some major eye goop because the sand got in there. Thankfully, we did not see any ticks on his body afterward!